


Stillness of Hours

by elanor_pam



Series: The Golden Age [5]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Depression, Dissociation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Language Barrier, Physical Therapy, Sign Language
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-13
Updated: 2016-11-23
Packaged: 2018-07-14 22:33:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7193597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elanor_pam/pseuds/elanor_pam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He knew on an intellectual level that everything was strange and scary. It should have been alarming, but all he felt was an all-encompassing nothingness— so heavy and overwhelming it wearied him just to think of engaging with the outside of his head.</p>
<p>After pirates, after war, recovery dragged on at the speed of a slime crawler, and was exactly as disgusting an experience.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

On the first night of the rest of his life, Karkat laid— sometimes sat— on a padded platform, staring into the air. Things were happening to and around him, he was aware; but somehow, simultaneously, they were taking place a thousand light years away from him.

He knew on an intellectual level that everything was strange and scary. Like this lusus-white alien. It kept coming in and bustling around, and fussing with his snuggleplanes without uttering a single word; it smiled at him, made hand signs, massaged his hand, patted his hair, all in complete silence.

It should have been alarming, but all he felt was an all-encompassing nothingness— so heavy and overwhelming it wearied him just to think of engaging with the outside of his head.

So he laid limply on his platform and stared unseeing at the ceiling, and when prompted by some tugging, allowed himself to be sat up. His arms were heavy and clumsy; controlling them felt like too much effort, and he only expended the bare minimum of exertion before leaning back against the cushions and returning his attention to the empty air halfway to the patterned wall.

Something moved below his field of view. He looked down half-heartedly; a pearly white hand held a tablet right over his lap, seemingly in offering. There were images in it, which he did not feel like deciphering. 

Because it was apparently expected of him, he raised his heavy hand and held a corner of the tablet. The white hand let go; it slipped from his dumb fingers onto his lap. Meaningless exercise thus finished, he let his hand fall limp and went back to staring into the middle distance. (At the edge of his sight, he saw the tablet be surreptitiously removed, then promptly forgot about it.)

Twenty sweeps later perhaps, the silent white alien once again hailed for his attention, this time by waving a spherical chunk of opalescent rock where he could see it, in a manner which it obviously thought was enticing. Once he focused, it rolled the sphere between its hands, squeezed it with his fingers; it looked all very pointless. Karkat promptly dismissed her from his sluggish thoughts.

A small eternity later, the alien nuisance once again deposited something uninvited on his lap; this time a tray, with a bowl on it. Its contents were bright pink with red chunks. 

He felt no hunger, but clearly eating was a thing he should do at some point.

Dubiously, he picked up the available spoon; it inexplicably dropped from his fingers, and he didn't try again. Instead, he held the bowl with both hands splayed, and lifted it to his lips. His arms felt like they hadn't been used in sweeps.

If the thing had a taste, he couldn't feel it. The texture was neither pleasant nor unpleasant, and the chunks were not noteworthy enough to expend opinions on. He drank the whole thing, because he didn't feel like arguing against it; when he put the bowl back down, slowly with clumsy arms, he was just relieved the interaction would soon be over with.

However, the alien looked inexplicably ecstatic. It squinted and dimpled at him in an overly happy smile, and made some incomprehensible gesture in front of its face; at Karkat's blank look, it made another gesture— opening and closing its fingertips in front of its mouth— then repeated the previous one— sweeping the pinched fingers in front of its lips before opening them emphatically.

Like a moonbeam piercing the evening fog, it suddenly came to Karkat that the creature was attempting communication. The opening and closing fingers were about eating food, he was certain; and the sweeping gesture was calling the food tasty. 

It was asking if the thing in the bowl was tasty.

I don't know, he thought, but couldn't bring himself to say it out loud. He did not really care for the silence, but at the same time he was loath to break it; he did not know what he wanted, or what he thought, except that nothing enticed or excited him and this yawning _lack_ was overwhelming— but at the same time so precarious, he felt like he wouldn't have been able to handle excitement to begin with. 

In the end he shrugged one shoulder in acknowledgment that a question had been asked. The alien seemed satisfied with it, and taking the tray away it finally turned and left through a door Karkat had not previously registered the existence of.

An eternity and a blink later it came back, again with the tablet, as well as a mirror. The mirror was surprisingly big, and it floated; the alien shoved it almost carelessly, and it came to a perfect stop in front of him.

Karkat didn't know what he'd been expecting, but inside the mirror there was a sad, bedraggled kid with a dark cloud hovering around his head.

His hair had... grown.

Rather, it had morphed into a huge puffy mound of shabby curls, horntips barely peeking through, and to his dismay he found that the sight of his nearly unrecognizable face made him feel, past the numb uncaring nothingness, dismay.

This time, when the alien again offered a tablet, Karkat was primed to recognize the illustrated list of haircuts in it. 

Why the fuck not?, he thought, scrolling through the disembodied heads and their coiffures' varying degrees of presentability. At the very least, having his jugular accidentally razored might wake up whatever was comatose and dying inside of him, if only for a second.

The prospect seemed to revitalize him, in a way. He flipped through picture after picture, looking for a spark of recognition, for anything that looked like what _he'd_ looked like before. He knew it was ridiculous, and that he was being ridiculous, but he suddenly, fervently, wanted to feel like himself again, and something past the emptiness was telling him that if he _looked_ like himself again...

It wouldn't work, of course. Nothing would ever work again. He would never go back to what he was like before. But— to die as himself. To deliver himself in his own terms.

He was sure that philosophy had brought him strength, once.

In the end, he pointed to an image in which he could almost see his old fringe, the size his hair used to be. The alien nodded emphatically, then turned around to bustle at some tools on a small side platform; immediately, as if by magic, Karkat's eyes cleared and he could finally see everything that was wrong, everything that was undesirable in his choice, and his veins filled with ice.

He should find a way to say no, but he couldn't. He should find a way to say he'd changed his mind, but he couldn't. He should find a way to apologize for wasting this helpful alien's time, for not being appreciative of its efforts, for fucking up even such a simple choice as a mop shearing, but he was paralyzed.

The alien wrapped his shoulders in some long, flowing, restraining cloth, a prison he could easily escape from if only he weren't such a pathetic little bastard. Through the mirror, he watched its white, fake lusus hands massage some concoction on those horrendous fat tendrils, almost as alien to him as those jointed fingers were; when a small comb came into view, he silently hoped for a painless oblivion.

But in the end, nothing really happened. The comb glided smoothly through his curls with barely a hint of tugging, and the hair in its wake was left silky and glistening like a magazine's highblood model. It clearly hadn't been as messy as he'd assumed, just voluminous, and in hindsight it made sense that his hair was cleaned and combed while he was asleep. He felt stupid for not noticing it from the start.

And there were no scissors. Instead, some sort of concealed blade in the comb did its work, shearing his cranial mop little by little under the alien's slow measuring brushes. Clumps of fluff tumbled down his torso, sticking here and there to the protective cloth.

Nothing happened, but the tumbling of clumps. To the very end, nothing else happened at all. 

Then the alien sucked the clumps with some handheld device, unfastened the cloth, brushed his face and shoulders, and on the mirror there was... him. There was only him, in a slightly wrong hairdo.

Inexplicably, he started crying and couldn't stop. 


	2. Chapter 2

When he woke up next, face still feeling hollow and papery from hours of aimless crying jags, there was a different alien sitting by his platform.

Where the previous alien had been short, plump and pearly-white, this one was slender, tall and jet-black. For a wild moment he thought this was her— Aleya— Aleya from the ship, her of the scarlet droplet in her finger— and whatever was currently telling him otherwise he could not say; but it was not her.

This alien had a pastels-patterned scarf wrapped loosely around its head in some sort of baffling fashion statement— or perhaps, like him, it felt vaguely cold. It was engrossed on a tablet (everyone had tablets here, clearly) and for several minutes it ignored his existence completely. Eventually it glanced aimlessly his way, and then — with alarming speed — it straightened its back and put the tablet away.

"Well, hello there!" it said, in a pleasantly low female voice. (Huh.) 

"...hn," Karkat vocalized halfheartedly. 

"I've been waiting to talk to you," it (she?) continued. "Do you feel up to a presumably long conversation?"

"...no," he mumbled. No was the shorter word. It was about all he felt in the mood to say.

"I see," she said, with a knowing nod. "In that case."

She pulled her tablet back out and relaxed on her plush chair, going back to ignoring Karkat completely.

A long silence followed this interaction. The alien made absolutely no signs of even intending to leave her perch, and seemed perfectly engrossed in her reading; for his part, Karkat attempted to fade out into the nothing and ignore her back, like he had with the other alien for most of their time together, but for whatever reason it was just really hard.

Maybe it was the fact that she spoke. Maybe it was the fact that she wasn't even trying to engage him. But eventually the silence in the block morphed into a suffocating, syrup-thick atmosphere of awkwardness.

At least for him. This alien's species must have lacked whatever gland secreted squirming social embarrassment.

He found himself shifting in his little nest of snuggleplanes. It was the first time he remembered registering the nest of snuggleplanes. For no reason other than a sudden desire to move, he rolled on his side and burrowed in them up to his neck. From that position he had a premium view of the slanting light of the window; this time it was pinkish, almost like an Alternian night. The window itself was narrow and horizontal, deep and strange such that he couldn't actually see outside. The wall it was dug on was a soft textured beige, and at about waist-high, it shifted into an elaborate, flowery curlicue pattern in discreet colors. 

Oh look, the floor was carpeted. It looked pretty plush. And hey, he thought as his eyes traveled through the block for the first time, there were pictures on the opposite wall, he'd never noticed. They were too small and distant to make out. How pointless. His eyes travelled further to the side; apparently that thing over there was some sort of wardrobifier. Karkat had never had one, so he wouldn't really know. He looked over his shoulder. The chair, which the alien _still hadn't vacated_ , was kind of pretty, actually.

The alien herself stared at her tablet with a look of intense, lethal concentration, the kind that both invited interruption and promised reprisal.

Was she waiting him out? Was she really just engrossed in her reading? Even from Karkat's point of view (upwards from the bed with an unblocked line of sight to her unflinching face) it was impossible to tell.

In the end, he blinked first.

"Hey," he mumbled, rolling back under his nest to face her; the alien seemed only very slightly startled out of her reading, and looked wordlessly at him. "Just... say whatever you have to say. Just get it over with."

"Hmmm," was the only sound she made, as she shot him a considering look. "I will strive to be short in this first meeting," she said, finally. "There is plenty to talk about, but there will be other visits. Karkat..." it felt strange to hear his name from an alien's mouth, all the more in such a gentle, almost pitying tone. For a second, she grappled with whatever she had to say; her eyes strayed minimally towards the window before she took ruthless control of herself, snapped her eyes back to him, and said: "I was assigned to protect you."

"Hn," he grunted. (Only much later would the meaning of those words really sink in.)

"You have lost your lusus," she nodded once, slowly, as if in condolences, "and you are removed from your homeworld. There are many things you don't know about this new universe. My name is Sabiha. My job is to help you adapt. To answer your questions to the best of my ability, and to offer counsel when you need advice." She shot him another long, considering look before continuing, with a calculated smirk: "And... to defend your privacy, now that you are a celebrity."

"Hn," he grunted again, and then, perking slightly from his nest, "What?"

"You are basically a hero now," she clarified, or not.

"Why?" Karkat was genuinely baffled.

"Many "cultural" reasons," she said, discreetly air-quoting. "But among the ones I could more easily explain right now... you remember being told about the status of children in the Coalition, right?"

He shrugged.

"The truth is, it goes a bit deeper than a divide between children and adults," she continued. "It is primarily related to the cultural roles assigned to both _obligation_ and _experience_. By virtue of a shorter amount of time lived, children are considered to have less experience than adults. Therefore, they do not have an obligation to be capable of things adults are expected to do. And this pattern goes beyond childhood and adulthood."

Karkat stared at her blankly.

"We do not practice conscription," she said. "Therefore, most of our adult population is not proficient in fighting, turning instead to other specialized work. If one wishes to join the Galactic Patrol and fight against pirates — or, yes, Alternian incursions — they volunteer, and are then put through a very long training regimen before they are allowed to be involved even in the safest duties. The difficulty of the work they are expected to do rises only when they prove themselves capable of easily accomplishing the work they already do. Thus," she again looked at him measuringly, "to most of our adult population, the average Alternian child who risks death on a daily basis has already done more than the vast majority of adults would ever have an obligation to do. Any Alternian child is held in both pity and awe for this fact alone."

She paused in her speech to sip from a glass that had been floating by her chair, and which Karkat had assumed to be an optical illusion from the conjunction of pattern, wall and door visible behind her.

"But you and your group did even more than survive Alternia," she continued, putting her glass back on the air. "The circumstances of your capture and imprisonment are widely known. In fact, it utterly dominates the news. Even for an Alternian adult, steeped in war and class struggle, such treatment would be considered brutal to an extreme. To merely endure and survive it is heroic. For a child, it is doubly so. In fact, nearly three times the average Alternian Gross Imperial Product had already been donated to the Pupa Defense Association _before_ your ship reached Excelsis 5, merely because it was known that you would be put under their care."

Karkat sunk a little further back into his nest.

"As for you in particular..." she trailed off. "Well, somehow, apparently, Excelsis 5's visual records of its public spaces — which can only be examined by judicial order — were hacked into, and its footage of the attack was highly publicized by a group of—" disdainful cough— " _intrepid_ reporters. Special attention was put on the newly rescued children, because they are nothing if not opportunistic — excuse me, my neutrality is slipping — and among them the greater focus has been put on... well, you."

" _Why?_ " he rasped out. Even when everything else seemed to make some bizarre sense in context, when it came to him it just fucking didn't.

She cocked her head with a small smile, perhaps an alien way of displaying wordless understanding. "A child is not _expected_ to protect itself, because it is an adult's _obligation_ to do so. And as it is the adult's obligation, a child has no obligation to protect another child. I say this, but it's not actually uncommon for children to support each other during a crisis; still, it is considered _incredibly_ romantic, and figures prominently in our folk tales. The footage of you holding your friend and carrying him along under fire and bombardment is, to many, a thing of legend— and you, by association, a hero straight out of them."

"But," he mumbled, his throat clenching under the threat of tears. "But Mui is dead."

"Yes," she nodded deeply again. "He died saving you, and soon after, you, too, almost died saving another kid."

"I didn't," he sniffled. "There was no other kid. I was carrying Mui, and, and—" he wiped his tears on a snuggleplane, pressed down on his eyes until he saw sparks and purple clouds in the blackness, breathed harshly under the covers. When he uncovered his face, he was staring stricken at the ceiling. "I don't remember how it went," he confessed.

"A supporting pillar came bearing down," she said. "And Mui psychically pushed you out of the way— even as you were tugging him away yourself. Afterwards you were stock still, perhaps in shock, when you took notice of another kid nearby, whom you successfully pushed to safety before being hit by an explosion." She drank more water, slowly, in a supernatural calm which Karkat could not fathom. "The footage has driven public commotion to such a level of hysteria that, even now, as we speak, there are marches demanding the United Galaxies declare open war against the Condesce, specifically for hurting you."

"But— but he _died!_ " Karkat found himself shouting; he'd sat up at some point, and apparently it took a lot of him because he was nearly wheezing. "He _died!_ I'm a fucking _failure!_ Everything was _useless!_ "

"That makes you a _tragic_ hero," she said, simply. "They are very popular, I've heard."

After hearing such a thing, there was no recourse for Karkat but to burst into an actual, howling, crying tantrum. He tried to be angry, he _wanted_ to be angry; but most of all he felt a helpless, crushing revulsion at the thought of— of being celebrated for losing a friend. Oh god, oh god.

How long he sat there, doubled over a mound of cloth to bury the embarrassingly hysterical sobbing coming from his mouth, he couldn't tell. But eventually he downgraded to uncontrollable shaky little hitches, like some small beast's pathetic mewling; and he pushed up on his arms — what was wrong with them, he felt so clumsy, everything felt like so much work — to look at the completely unmoved, completely still alien.

Her face was severe. She looked at him like a General implacably staring at a squirming cadet, saving her contempt for when the pathetic worm was done rolling on the mud.

Karkat still couldn't stop shaking, but eventually, she judged the effort to be good enough.

"Karkat," she said, dead serious. "Those people are assholes."

Apparently, the General thought the squirming cadet had a point. 

"They are being completely repulsive assholes," she reiterated, "and soon they will become aware of it. When they do, they are going to be absolutely crushed by shame. But right now they are being emotionally manipulated by people who are themselves incapable of shame, and those are the people I'm here to protect you from. As for the rest..." She made a big show of checking her tablet. "Why, it does appear that attendance to today's marches dropped to less than 40% of yesterday's, which was also about 60% from the previous one. Instead, a group has branched from it to start a toy donation drive. All of you kids are guaranteed more toys than a cerulean-blood could play with, one per day, for their entire lifetime." Short pause. "There's also a petition for the United Galaxies to _not_ declare war yet."

"...I don't get it," Karkat risked saying, despite his crushing exhaustion and his better judgement.

"Well, the United Galaxies can hardly go to war for the sake of your fee-fees," she said, in a jokestery tone.

"No," he waved a hand feebly, and cracked a small, wavering smile— mostly to let her know he appreciated the quip. "I just... assumed you'd been at war all along."

"A fair assumption," she nodded solemnly, "and one I'm sure the Condesce is also operating under. Officially, though, she's classified as a hate group leader, and her offensives are usually filed in as tribal conflict. There's a motion to call this last one a legit skirmish, though."

"But aren't you like..." he shrugged, "technologically superior?"

She nodded again, looking very satisfied. "The only Alternian ship on the level of a Coalition vessel is the Battleship Condescension itself, and the Condesce was always loath to upgrade the fleet, for whatever reason." She paused. "That is, for the reason of not wanting internal competition. That is pretty obvious to me at least. But officially, this peculiarity is just that. I think she wised up now. It remains to be seen." She drank some more water from her floating cup. "But strictly speaking, the Coalition, right now, at this very moment, _could_ crush the Alternian Empire. But where would that put trollkind? You'd just go from conquerors to conquered. 

"So the Coalition long ago voted that Trolls should be the ones to defeat Trolls. We'd provide aid and technology to do so, and manpower if it came to it, but it should be a troll initiative, under troll leadership. And for their part, our trolls have been readying themselves for their reckoning for a long, long time. All we needed were for pieces to fall in their places. Some already have. Others are up in the air."

"That's amazingly vague of you," muttered Karkat, half wishing he had the stamina for a proper verbal tirade at the moment. "Very helpful. I'm so enlightened on the matter of these cryptobaffling political maneuvers, my chakras are positively blitzed."

"And I sure am glad you're cheered enough to snark at me!" She retorted, to Karkat's surprise. "I say this with all due sincerity— you are infinitely more lively than when we first began our talk. But I did promise to keep things short, and this one topic has gone on longer than even my original plans. Can I fill you in on the details on tomorrow's visit? It occurs me that I'll need to translate some terms into Alternian— oh, fine!" Apparently Karkat's resentment showed on his face. "I guess I can give _one_ example of a strategic issue before we get back to my script, or at the very least let you go back to sleep. Is that okay with you?"

"I can live with it," he conceded.

"In that case," she said, giving Karkat an overwhelming sense of deja-vù. "There is a legitimate fear that, if pushed against a corner, the Condesce will resort to activating the Vast Glub rather than conceding defeat. Nowadays troll scientists have already developed psychic shields against this event, but there's really no way of measuring their true effectiveness against the actual event, no matter how rigorous the lab testing is. And proximity to the event's epicenter is known to raise its lethality. Trolls on the frontline would be in unacceptable danger, even in the most well-insulated vessels. Not to mention that the Coalition's troll population is but a small percentage; allowing the Vast Glub to happen would be tantamount to genocide, even if our side had no casualties. This makes the notion of a counteroffensive slightly... problematic.

"Our side's best bet is to wait until a Heiress rises in Alternia, and offer an alliance in secret. Theoretically, this allied Heiress would suppress the Vast Glub in the event that the Condesce were to employ it. Ideally, she would also allow the monster to be returned whence it came. Still, one way or the other, her very presence would legitimize our troll's victory, and simplify the cleanup and reorganization. And then," she shrugged. "The Alternian Empire would join the Coalition as a free state, and everyone would live happily ever after until the next crisis. But that makes her, without a doubt, our most important unfulfilled requirement."

Karkat had listened to the spiel in open-mouthed fascination, nodding along as she spoke; as she reached for her floating cup, looking rather self-satisfied, he lay back on his platform nest, breathless, face prickling cold with exhilarated fear.

"So all you need is a Heiress," he breathed out, pump biscuit racing in his ears.

"Basically, yes," she confirmed, cup in hand.

Pettily, Karkat waited until she had raised the cup to her lips before speaking again.

"There's a Heiress."

To her credit, she did not choke, or spit, or mar her elegant poise in any way. She merely sat very still, cup to her lips, like an obsidian statue commemorating proper hydration. When she moved again she didn't put the cup down; instead, she turned it all the way up, swallowing its contents in a single loud gulp.

Then she left her chair, kneeling by Karkat's platform close to his ear.

"There _is_ a Heiress," she whispered, like a stunned, toneless question.

"Yes," he whispered back, caught up on the sudden vibe of secrecy her new position was sending him.

"How old is she?" She asked, whispering still; her face was once again that of a general, this time collecting a vital report from a wounded spy. Karkat's heart thudded painfully; where before he had felt empty and bored and dead inside, now he was keyed up, drunk with terror, and almost swooning from the relief of it.

He was alive, and selling his fucked up, broken empire to an enemy he knew nothing about.

"As old as me," he gasped back. The air was thick in his lungs.

She held his trembling hand. Through dulled senses, he felt wetness. One of them was sweating copiously from the palm. It was probably him.

"How well known is she?" she asked, even more softly than before.

Karkat's hand clenched involuntarily. He was going to let the General down.

"I don't know," he confessed, shakily. "She. She was friendly. But she didn't like to show off. I... I don't know if she ever left the sea."

"How did you learn of her?" the General asked.

"She was a friend of a friend," he answered.

The hand holding his twitched in surprise.

"Did you ever— speak with her?" she asked.

"Lots," he nodded. Everything felt heavy and humid. "She... she would love it here," he admitted, finally, looking back into the alien's face; despite the sharpness of her eyes, he managed to squint past her massive aura of unchallenged authority to see, again, the female alien in the softly-colored head shroud, her black smooth face framed by fussily arranged folds, a pendant at her forehead. He laughed nervously, without feeling an ounce of amusement. "She used to say she'd change the meaning of culling into— into caring. She liked to take care of fish."

She nodded slowly, her forehead pendant sparkling under the pinkish light. With her other hand, she reached for the piece of furniture by his platform, fiddled around somewhere beyond his sight; when she pulled back, her hand held another cup, this time with a suckling tube.

The inside of his mouth felt like ash and rubber, but he found himself drinking to the very last dregs even though he did not know whether that was thirst or not.

"Karkat," she said finally, more serious and solemn than she'd ever been so far. "What I'm going to tell you right now is very important. _Most Heiresses do not survive to adulthood_. When one arises who could pose a threat, the Condesce arranges for her untimely death. Most are put under heavy surveillance. She does not suffer competition, and never actually leads a battle she's not sure to walk out of. She prizes nothing as highly as her own skin, not even her pride. And if we didn't know of a Heiress, the chances are high that she still doesn't."

Karkat nodded, mute with horror.

"Do you understand, Karkat? If she learns that a contender exists, at such a delicate time, she and her allies will doubtlessly assassinate her. And just as we monitor their communications, we must assume they will attempt to monitor ours. Do not speak of her in media. Do not write about her publicly. Speak of her only when safety is confirmed. Do you understand me? I will inform the Comuna. If you are ever asked about the Second Tiara, deflect. Play dumb. I will _coach_ you if you need me to. This will make or break our impending war."

He nodded again, numb from head to toes.

"What is her name?"

"F-feferi Peixes."

She grimaced. "Definitely not a name we can mention lightly," she said, but with some levity. She relaxed from the stiff bow over his head, leaned back in a stretch. "Still, you can calm down now. She's as safe as she can be, and discretion alone is enough to keep her so. For security purposes let's just call her our Pink Baby from now on."

"What's a baby?" he mumbled, still clenching her proffered hand for dear life. Where she was apparently relaxing, he was definitely spiralling.

"Alien grubs, basically," she said, rubbing his hand soothingly. "Some of them hatch pinkish, because of their translucent skin and red blood. It's considered cute. Can refer to other things by association."

"Huh," he said, feebly. 

"And now... we should really change topics," she said, lightly, letting go of his hand and returning to her chair; it was almost as if they hadn't been talking about crushing the Empire seconds ago. "This last one has excited you beyond what is responsible, and the staff is sure to have my ass for it. How are you feeling?"

How? Karkat had no words to describe it. He felt like a stampede of hoofbeasts had exploded all around him, and then magically transformed him into a floating soap bubble. In lieu of a verbal answer, he raised his shaky hands.

"They'll have my ass for dinner with black salt," she said, nodding thoughtfully to herself. "They will let you have some, and I'm going to deserve it. Do you want to sleep, or do you want to talk?"

Karkat shook his head. His new haircut slid weirdly on the silky cushion under him. He was tired but keyed up; he was fully awake, but breathless. 

She once again shot him a long measuring look.

"Well..." she said, slowly. "Maybe we should just wind down, and talk about smaller things. Would you like to know about my species? We are Carapacians, and our customs are guaranteed to, at the very least, bore you to sleep. Or— you could tell me something about yourself. Would you like to? I would like to learn about you."

Karkat did not really know enough about carapacians to be curious about carapacians, and didn't really feel up to talking about his uneventful life waiting for death on Alternia. But — perhaps because they'd just talked about Feferi — he found himself mumbling hesitantly about the other names populating his trollian list. 

Burned up Megido gleefully stuck in her coon, crazy Serket who will probably forever regret putting her there; Captor who could hack literally anything and was like his best friend, and Makara who was a pan-addled junkie and also basically his best friend; blind Pyrope alone in the forest with bark gnomes eating her sanity, spineless Nitram stuck in his wheeled device. Oh shit, that wasn't meant to be a pun. It was so uncalled for. Literally everyone you know could be on cull-roll...

But maybe Leijon could make it through, if her cat thing didn't annoy anyone. Her moirail Zahhak might cover for her, even though he was an asshole. Maryam had a guaranteed spot in the caves for sure. And if Ampora pulled his head out of his ass, he might look forward to a bright future as the moirail of Pink... pink... thing.

Baby.

Yeah, that. Whatever.

By the end of it he was crying, tired, sleepy and languid, but he'd done it at last.

He'd acknowledged the friends he'd never meet again.

"Thank you," the alien said, softly. At some point she'd gone back to holding his hand. "Thank you for telling me this."

He didn't really know why his disjointed mumbly-sniffly half-hearted memories warranted thanking, but accepted it with a half-shrug and as much grace as his wrung-dry heart had to spare.

He was not awake enough to remember the alien leaving his block.

(Later, when he faded back from a dreamless sleep, the block was dark but for softly glowing flowers on the wall pattern; the plump white alien was back, and coaxed him out of bed onto a floating chair.

It led him to a concealed side block, where there was a load gaper and an ablution trap. It helped him out of the half-humid clothes he'd slept in, and into the warm water; it then deposited a strange floating sphere into the trap, softly glowing. Under dimmed lights, the walls turned into a starry sky; Karkat gaped mindlessly at the shimmering galaxies and twinkling constellations, and continued gaping like an exhausted daywalker as he was wiped and dressed and led back the way he came. 

Last he knew, he was back among slightly different sheets, which were dutifully made into a new nest around him.) 


	3. Chapter 3

On the next night (day?) Karkat was back to feeling dreary and empty, but this time in a stunned, yesterday-I-got-a-brick-to-the-face kind of way.

It was apparently early, because the alien servant(?) was nowhere to be seen, and there was nothing in the room to occupy himself with— or rather, there were things in the room he didn't know what to do with, which amounted to the same in the end. He stared at the wall for a while, but for some reason the activity had lost its luster.

Maybe he could try to stand up, he thought idly, and then proceeded to not do so for a long and incredibly boring stretch of time; throughout, he kept idly thinking about standing up, and, eventually, about pee. Only after much deliberation he managed to push the snuggleplanes aside, and inch-by-inch scooted off; he was wobbly, and circling the padded platform made him feel woozy and winded even in the mincing steps he eventually downgraded to.

He could have stepped off the _other_ side of the platform and saved himself some work. He had no idea why he hadn't done just that. 

Regardless of approaching angle, the concealed door slid open at his proximity, and the main door did the same mere microseconds later. It was the white alien with a tray; it spotted him and immediately pushed its burden aside (the thing floated idly by) to come fuss at him. 

He minced a little faster into the block, then turned back to her with a slightly apologetic wave. 

(And then the alien had to step inside to show him the button that closed the door.)

That business finished, he minced his way out (after a brief moment of panic where he couldn't find another button) and allowed the alien to support him on the way back to the platform. It fussed the cushions into a seating configuration, then presented the tray; it had two smallish bowls of watery soup, which he consumed with a little more zest than the previous day. 

The soup was thin and salty, with a thicker brothy feel at the bottom. The flavor was unfamiliar but not bad. This time, when the alien asked if it was tasty, he could nod without feeling like a liar. 

It then presented the round opal, which he accepted dubiously. It was soft and smooth, and didn't feel like a rock in his fingers. With an identical opal, it started rolling the gem in its hand like it had the previous day, and guessing at its intention Karkat attempted to do the same; to his dismay, he couldn't seem to put much strength in the act, and the ball kept tumbling off onto his lap. Squeezing had similar results. Just aligning his fingers around the ball took forever, and they kept tangling or sliding without his meaning to.

He felt so clumsy and feeble, and so tired, he handed the ball back in defeat after less than a minute. The servant tried to entice him with it again, without much success; it seemed resigned when a small light blinked on over the door beyond it (had it always been there? He'd never noticed) and a _third_ alien stepped in.

"Hello, Mr. Vantas!" It said, affably. It was one of the heavily freckled aliens with bald textured heads, the two thin tendrils sweeping back from the top of its head joined together with colorful bands. "Hello, Ms. Paint," it nodded to the silent alien, who turned to him and immediately initiated a series of complex, spastic, lightning-fast hand gestures.

The alien proceeded to, very seriously, answer in kind, and they kept this strange gesticulating back-and-forth for several really awkward seconds. 

Eventually they parted, the white alien striding out of the door and leaving the opalescent spheres behind with Mr.(?) Freckles.

"So you're having problems with the ball exercises, huh?" Mr. Freckles asked, sitting down on the chair previously occupied by General Shroudhead. 

This action lost him a few sympathy points, and Karkat felt disinclined to answer verbally. He shrugged a half-hearted shoulder.

"Well, don't worry about it!" the new alien said, simply, as if that somehow solved all his problems. "You'll recover in no time, you just need to keep using your arms."

Karkat stared at it flatly, and it burst into laughter.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" It said, hunching its shoulders like an awkward kid. "I guess it doesn't feel easy to you, huh? But you incurred some major nerve damage in your arms, and your brain thinks it's still there. We're going to have to convince your brain otherwise. We don't have to start with the balls right away, but you _do_ need to move your arms. Here, let me show you something cool. Can I?"

The alien scooted a little closer, pointed at Karkat's hand. He offered it dubiously. It pushed his sleeve back, revealing some strange wristband he hadn't felt before; then it tapped some small, shiny pattern on the band, and in the blink of an eye both his hands were covered in some strange black material which he could swear he had felt speeding all the way up to his shoulders.

Then the alien somehow projected a dark screen on the air, apparently by means of vaguely waving its hand.

"See these?" it said breathlessly, pointing to some orangey-glowy lines contouring what Karkat could easily tell were his arms; it turned around to face him, glowing with excitement, and revealed: "These are _your arms!_ "

Karkat stared at the screen flatly.

Still, despite that underwhelming announcement, the projection screen did prove to have actual uses. The docterrorist could flip between a display of Karkat's veins, muscles and nerves, and highlight specific ones while he prattled on about science things Karkat didn't pay any attention to. It made him stretch his arms forward, over his head and to the sides, then showed on the screen which muscles and nerves weren't doing their job properly; it made him open and close his fists, even as feebly as he did, and highlighted a bunch of spots.

"So what you need right now is to build up strength," it concluded, finally. "Your muscles are fine, because they're brand new; but your brain still thinks you need to take it easy, because last it remembers they were kind of in a bad way! The way to go is by using your hands, your arms— I know it sucks right now, but you don't have to do a lot to begin with— just open and close your fingers a few times every now and then! Play around with the ball a little, squeeze it, roll it around, change from one hand to the other, just fiddle around with it. The sky's the limit."

Presumably this docterrorist hadn't actually _meant_ to sound like he was describing genital fondling, which Karkat currently felt negative levels of desire to engage in. In any case he accepted the little sphere again, just as dubiously as he had before.

"You don't have to do it for a long time," the docterrorist continued, "it's okay to stop when you get bored. Stop when you're bored, start again when you're bored! Once you're a little stronger, we'll give you some crafts to do. Do you do crafts?"

"No," said Karkat, contemplating the opalescent sphere in silence.

"And music? Do you play any instrument?"

Karkat remained in silence.

"That's okay, you can learn anything! If you don't want anything specific, we'll go with whatever will exercise your fingers the most. And I'll come in a few times a day to help you around with some less boring exercises. So..." it stopped gabbing for one second. "Do you have any questions?"

"Actually— yes," said Karkat, hesitantly.

The docterrorist's face brightened like the sky with both moons in their apogee, causing Karkat to hesitate even further.

"Why... why doesn't the white alien talk?" he asked, finally, staring intently into his fondle-toy.

"Uh," the alien looked momentarily stumped.

"Y— you don't have to answer it, I guess," he continued, hesitantly. It was probably a personal matter. He kind of regretted bringing it up, and wasn't even sure why he had bothered.

"Oh," said the alien again. "No, no, it's just... I haven't even thought about carapacian history in the last five hundred years or so— that's like two hundred alternian sweeps or something! Hehe," it laughed awkwardly. "So I'm embarrassingly fuzzy on the topic, sorry. It's a cultural thing, I think?" Its eyes unfocused. "Like, there's some ancient history about a war, in which the peons were bred without vocal cords? Because the royalty thought if they didn't talk they wouldn't complain? But instead they just talked in handsigns, and the royalty was boned because it had no idea. A couple generations later and there was a like a revolution or something, the kingdoms fell apart for some reason, the armies joined under some other mute peasant and humans got embroiled in the mess somehow; then Skaia bestowed its seeds of power and the Skaian royalty was established, the carapacians formed a unified republic, blah, blah, parties all around, and that's when the official galactic calendar starts. Some carapacians are still spontaneously hatched with functioning vocal cords, though—" it added, somewhat dubiously, "and restorative surgeries are not _exactly_ uncommon, but generally they just don't bother."

"I didn't get any of that," said Karkat. 

"Yeah, sorry, I'm not a historian," the docterrorist shrugged, then suddenly looked thoughtful. "Although _maybe_ I should start looking into that? Then _maybe_ —"

It didn't get the chance to finish its train of thought, as the door slid open at that very moment to reveal General Shroudhead, peeking into the room with a tray of varied nutritional implements.

The docterrorist shot to its feet, and somehow during that lightning-fast movement the very solid and heavy-looking chair managed to end up toppled sideways on the floor with a mystery shoe dangling from a support strut.

"Hey there, Karkat," she said, pushing her tray inwards as the door slid closed at her back. "Hello, Doctor Hangyok," she greeted the docterrorist, without acknowledging the toppled chair or the alien's stiff-backed, bug-eyed expression in any way.

"Hi!" the docterrorist managed to vocalize in a single squeaky, surprised burst. "Hi! I mean," it seemed to recover its movements, "hi, hello there, Sabiha. I." It looked around itself, as if surprised by its environments. "I was just about finished with little Karkat here! Oh would you look at the chair." It pushed the chair awkwardly back onto its struts. "And my shoe! Ho ho," it cried out a heartbreakingly pathetic attempt at jocular laughter as it leaned down and tilted the chair back to liberate the apparatus, accidentally causing the chair to topple back all the way and hit its face with the shoe-clad strut. "Whoops!" it said, rubbing its face, and then proceeding to smack its forehead again when leaning down to fetch the escaped shoe from the floor.

"I'm glad you're finished with him," General Shroudhead said, still studiously ignoring the docterrorist's shenanigans, "because we have a lot to talk about, privately if you don't mind."

"Of course, of course," it said, putting its shoe back on again without any apparent issue, thankfully. "I will be but a minute."

"Leave the chair, I'll deal with it," she said dryly. 

"Oh, okay," it let go of the chair it had been about to straighten back up, and from the slight flinch of a leg Karkat could guess exactly where the chair dropped. "Do you need help with that?" It turned around nonchalantly, already extending its hands towards the floating tray.

"Absolutely _not_ ," she said, mercilessly, raising the tray high above her head. "This is my breakfast and I don't want to eat it out of the carpet. Off with you!"

"Haha, fair, fair," it said, gamely, waving at her deadly stony face with a sheepish smile before stepping towards the door; it slid open, and the docterrorist proceeded to smack nose-first into the frame before adjusting course and aiming correctly at the roughly 4-feet wide opening.

" _Ugh,_ " she said, once the door was safely closed behind the buffoon. Then she very purposefully slapped some spot at the door; there was no discernible difference, but she seemed satisfied. "I can't believe they've still got that stupid crush on me—"

"By the way, Sabiha!" Shouted the docterrorist's muffled voice from beyond the door, right before a dry smacking sound. "Oh, you locked the door," it said despondently, voice already going faint with distance. "That's fair..."

She stood still like a wrathful monument for a good few seconds before it became clear the docterrorist wasn't coming back.

"Apologies for that embarrassing display," she said finally, approaching the chair and straightening it perfectly with what seemed, to Karkat, to be a single very well-placed kick. "It's been over 50 sweeps, but they still haven't gotten over me, and I don't have much patience for this kind of hogwash."

She sat down heavily with her — surprisingly well-stocked — tray, and Karkat had the impression that her head-wrapping was... not quite as precisely arranged as the previous visit. 

(In fact that she looked exactly as in the previous visit — which was convenient as he had no idea how to recognize her otherwise — only less precisely arranged.)

"...was he a quadrant-mate?" he asked, meekly, his romantic-gossip instincts winning out over his lack of energy for speaking.

She twisted her face in distaste, and likely not because of the chocolatey finger-food she was chewing through. "We met during my previous case," she said, eventually, after setting a small mystery object on the piece of furniture by Karkat's bed. "And their sophomoric courtship made my life very hard for some time. I think they have developed a clue since then, but that little display does not instill me with much confidence."

"There's more than one?" he said, with some surprise.

"Oh? No, no— Doctor Hangyok does not ascribe to or identify with either male or female genders," she said, as if that were a completely normal thing to say. "It probably sounds confusing to you, since Alternian doesn't have a gender-neutral pronoun that isn't also derogatory. "They" is being used for now, but I expect the language will sort itself out in a few centuries." 

She shrugged to herself, then tucked into a half-sandwich. It disappeared quickly, even though she ate politely, with her mouth closed, and without dropping a single crumb; once finished, she selected something from her tray and offered it to Karkat.

"Technically your stomach is still recovering from that horrid fake-bacon you were fed," she said, "but this cookie is safe for you to eat. There's more here if you like it, too. Anyway, I'm sure you'll want to know how things went after yesterday—" she looked at him sharply— "you do remember yesterday, don't you?"

Karkat nodded, a little spooked by the sudden, unwarranted question. But she relaxed.

"I should have asked first thing," she said, sipping from her steaming cup with her eyes narrowed in self-reproach. "In your situation, it's very common for memory to— stutter. But you seem fine, thankfully! What about my name?" She asked, now smiling lightly. "Names are a lot harder to keep straight."

Karkat looked at her blankly, before his mind caught up with the question; then his eyes strayed downwards, and his throat clenched close with shame. (The cookie sat uneaten in his hand.)

"See?" she said, simply. "Names are harder to remember, alien ones all the more. Don't feel embarrassed. I certainly had a bitch of a time—" Karkat stared at her wide-eyed "—with troll names at first. Everyone does it. All you have to do is excuse yourself and ask for their name again."

Karkat nodded, dubiously.

"So... are you going to ask me my name?"

Karkat sunk back into his pillows, stared at her wide-eyed.

"Why the spooked face?" She asked, laughing. "It's just a question. Come on, let's reintroduce ourselves. But you ask first!"

Karkat's heart thumped painfully. This wasn't a test! This wasn't meant to be a test. But it felt so much like something he could fail terribly at. He looked around at the folds of his snuggleplanes, at the opalescent sphere tucked among them, at the crumbling cookie in his hand, before looking back at her.

"Whu— what—" he accidentally bit his tongue— " _Whatsyourname?!_ " he blurted out as fast as he could, and then tried to hide behind the cookie.

"I'm Sabiha," she said, smiling at him with pride— or sadistic amusement, maybe. "Sabiha Slickpaint. And your name is...?"

"Karkat—" he managed to strangle out, "Vantas—" he finished, toneless and undecided.

But she just extended a hand towards him. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Karkat."

He stared at the hand for entirely too long before something finally clicked in his brain, and he extended his own, awkward and covered in tiny crumbs.

She shook his hand, slowly and with all due solemnity, and then leaned back. 

"Now, Mr. Vantas, do you perchance recall our previous arrangements regarding our Pink Baby?"

Karkat drew a blank for all of two seconds before he drew himself up as tense and straight as Docterrorist They.

Sabiha nodded in satisfaction. "Good," she says. "I just came back from consulting the people managing that front."

She sat in thoughtful silence for a few seconds; then she pushed her tray aside, and once again abandoned her chair to kneel close by.

"Here is a representation of their chosen course of action," she said, and, opening her arms wide, she parked one on top of the snuggleplanes right by Karkat, and for a few seconds made the other one walk on two fingers towards the opposing hand, in tiny mincing steps that seemed to not go anywhere.

And then she turned to Karkat and shrugged ruefully.

Karkat frowned down at the display. So... they weren't doing anything? They were doing something, but very slowly? In the end he turned to her.

"Are they acting or not?" he asked in annoyance.

"They decided to be as roundabout as physically possible," she clarified. "Before contacting the Heiress, they want to build a secure line of data transmission towards the homeworld, and they need to do that without the Condesce noticing— or at least without her being able to do anything about it. And they intend to move at mucus-crawler speed lest she spots any movement at all. So... they're acting, but it'll be a while before we see any real results."

Karkat stared hard into the opposite wall and, for no reason he could adequately explain to himself, tossed the cookie at it before sliding down under the covers up to his head. He didn't know what he'd been expecting, but he felt underwhelmed and unsatisfied and mutely, distantly pissed off. 

He ended up losing track of time inside his snuggly cocoon, and eventually the strange proto-anger driving his tantrum dissolved into apathy. Staying in his hideout became a pointless statement; leaving it was not embarrassing enough to warrant letting Sabiha wait. 

He peeked out of the covers, struggling to express at least a semblance of sheepishness.

Sabiha had clearly kept busy while he sulked— her tray was much relieved, and there was now a (spotless) napkin spread on her lap. Her tablet floated at roughly head-height, and she read it intently while simultaneously stirring a cup; once finished she silently handed him another cookie.

"Want to change topics?" she asked. "There's really not a lot I can tell you on the Pink Baby front right now, but there _is_ a lot of stuff I was supposed to tell you about yesterday but didn't."

"Whatever," he mumbled. 

"Excellent!" she said, decisively. "You are currently in the Major Institute for Ailments and Maladies, which is a great hospital, but not fit for long-term living. So a new hive is being planned for your group. Hives in the coalition are built for permanent use, so we can't let you kids design the building itself — you'll likely think it boring on the outside — and you'll also share the majority of the facilities, so it will be built for size. But you'll get a budget to furnish your own personal block and hygiene block. The same budget, for everyone. Your monthly allowances will also be the same across the board, by the way."

Nice of her to assure their allowances wouldn't be assigned by caste. He wondered if chroma-taxes made up for it somehow. Although if everyone was red-blooded, they... probably had no chroma-taxes? He was too tired to care either way. He'd furnish a block. Yay. Such freedom.

"Technically speaking, you're still in your quarantine period, when you're supposed to be acclimatized before being formally introduced to Coalition life. This period still isn't over— for you, it barely even started— so for the first two weeks, at most, you'll be operating on an internal connection before being liberated for open internet. This is also to make sure you're not virtually hounded by _too many_ overly zealous internet creeps."

So communications would be restricted. Such safety.

"During that time, we'll do our best to introduce you to the basics of daily life in the Coalition. That is also one of my duties toward you specifically, as well as to the other children in general— the staff in our new institute will be sharing teaching duties as their specialties are called for. These lessons will continue after quarantine is over."

So they'd be indoctrinated. Such equality.

"Technology in the coalition is also vastly different from its Alternian equivalent, so you'll be gradually introduced to hive-implements and techniques that are considered basic requirement for your eventual adult lives— for things such as cooking, cleaning, and personal grooming."

And they'd also do menial tasks. He'd run out of rebellious slogans to be sarcastic about.

"And, of course, there'll be sports, dancing, and other physical activities. You all suffered varying degrees of muscular atrophy during your captivity, so everyone will be doing physical therapy at first. You, especially, are going to require at least three months of therapy for nerve-damage recovery. But once the initial therapy is past, you'll be allowed to pick any physical activity of choice as long as you exercise at least twice a week."

Training. Yay.

"Coalition sports are also wildly different from Alternian sports, so I recommend at least passing familiarity with their rules. In fact," she changed to a lighter, more conversational tone, "I find that sports in general make for some really helpful analogies to the quarantine and adaptation period. If you think of starting your life here as learning the rules to a new sport, it helps predict some of the more common hardships, and... put the usual fears in perspective. Do you get it?" she asked suddenly, turning to look at him— again, that measuring, intent look.

Karkat silently shook his head.

"You've spent your whole life playing the Game on Alternia," she said, solemn. "A bloody, unbalanced game with constantly shifting rules. But you played it well enough— your mere presence here is proof of that. The rules are ingrained within you. 

"But the Coalition is a completely different game. New arena, new players, new rules, new attitude. For us, it's inadmissible to send you out in the field without knowing what you're doing. We find it counterintuitive to force you to learn to play on the go; it's unfair to expect you to perform, and if you accidentally break a rule you weren't taught, the fault lies in whoever put you there. After all, games are supposed to be fun for everyone involved. There's no meaning in playing otherwise.

"So, in quarantine you are introduced to the theory of your new game, its most fundamental rules and objectives. It tells you what to expect. You're shown some footage, taught to find a few patterns, a few plays.

"And then, as a child— as all children are— you are invited to play on a no-stakes game in a smaller field. Rules are introduced little by little. If you forget a rule, you can stop and ask. If you break a rule, no harm is done. And if, as is bound to happen to anyone in your situation, muscle-memory takes over— if the rules that have been so long ingrained into you guide your actions despite your best efforts— then... once again, no harm is done. Because it's just training. It's a new game. It's to be expected. You just try that one pass again.

"This first period is supposed to be like that— a low-pressure introduction to these new social rules. We try to make it light when we can't make it entertaining. Now," her eyes lowered, ruefully, "no matter what I say, you are bound to find it suspicious. That is your prerogative, and your Right. It is the rule you know, which kept you alive on Alternia."

She leaned forward on her chair, eyes hard, all business.

" _I am the adult here._ If you suspect me, it falls on me to prove you wrong. If you fear me, it falls on me to put you at ease. And if I fail, it is my fault, not yours. This is what it means to be an adult in the Coalition."

Karkat covered his head again, closed his eyes against the half-light filtering through the fabric. He didn't want to think. He didn't want to dig for logic. He didn't want to trust her words, or to challenge them. 

He was tired of hope and tired of fear, and all he wished was for the fist of an uncaring god to finally strike him down and put him out of his misery.

(When he next peeked out, the light in the room had changed and Sabiha was nowhere to be seen. The cookie had gone soggy, forgotten in his hand; but on the nearby decorative unit there was a small plateful of them, at arm's reach, safely stored under a translucent meal dome. 

A card was propped against the dome. It said _Let's try again tomorrow —Sabiha_. 

The dome floated, fumbling and all. He ate one cookie. It was good.) 


	4. Chapter 4

On the next day, the mute white alien loaded him on a floating chair and led him off outside the block.

Ceiling openings illuminated the corridor in patches of pale sunlight. The walls alternated sections in geometric and organic patterns in bright colors. A marbled floor slid soundlessly between his bony knees and under the chair.

He hadn't taken a good long look at himself in a while. His sweater had marbly buttons. His pants were baggy with a satiny sheen, and were printed with a delicate gridlock punctuated by tiny diamonds. These aliens either didn't know shit about quadrants, or else he was being earmarked for some particularly fucked up duties. 

Under patterned hems, the mute alien had clad his feet in dainty slippers. They made his feet look weirdly small.

He was loaded onto a transportalizer; the destination was a plush, colorful room full of various species of brats producing varied levels of noise while running around in various speeds. To one side, there was a conspicuous bunch of familiar horns in a huddle.

His heart skipped a beat. 

Some sort of weirdly wheezy giggle came from behind his head; the white alien leaned into view with an impish smile (so that's what a soundless laugh was like. He hoped to _never_ hear it again) before tiptoeing over to the huddle, calling someone's attention without touching anyone or getting jabbed by any elbows somehow, and then pointing to him. 

The entire huddle seemed to perk up in a sort of domino effect; to his alarm, they slithered his way like an amorphous blob of bobbing horns and colorful shuffling slippers.

So that was what a small crowd of pupas trying and failing to move inconspicuously as a group looked like. He hoped to never see it again.

"Hey lil' dude," one of the older kids bent his knees to look at him— Grate Keeper, if he was placing the voice correctly. Things just _sounded_ different. A plush clean room with working lights and proper seating probably resulted in wildly different acoustics. "You're looking pretty good, actually! You always looked halfway to the demoness whenever I saw you. How is the tooth?"

"Tooth?" Karkat repeated, dumbly.

"Yeah, you were missing a tooth. Remember? I also lost one, but they implanted a temporary fake in my mouth."

Karkat ran his tongue across his teeth. Everything was in order. He couldn't even remember which one had been lost.

"Yeah, that answers that," he said. "And also some fuckery with your limbs, I think, but they seem in order, they're certainly right there."

"For fuck's sake!" said a girl, the precognition girl, maybe. "He got his limbs exploded out, you jerk, it's not that easy. Look at him, he's totally down the dump-chutter."

Grate Keeper retorted with some sort of infuriatingly wishy-washy non-apology, but half of it came to Karkat's ear scrambled into word-salad. There were— there were just too many people around him, too loud and too colorful in their patterned clothes, and standing when he was sitting; he could not place their voices or recognize their clean faces and combed hair, and their horns were little help when all he'd previously seen of them were bobbing shapes in the penumbra.

They'd shared hell in a dark room, naked in the filth, but they were strangers. He did not know them, he did not recognize them. Strangers still, not friends.

Not _his_ friends.

Oh no. Oh no. His throat was burning. His eyes were burning. His nostrils were burning. He was going to cry. He was going to cry in front of these asshole neighbors he'd successfully avoided for an entire lifetime and he couldn't stop.

His face crumpled and he started keening like a dumbass, right there.

"See? _See?_ " the girl all but screeched, pointing at him. "Head-first down the dump-chutter!"

"Don't make such a big deal of it," someone said, placatingly. "It'll be worse."

" _I don't know what you mean!_ " Karkat managed to squeeze out his clenched throat somehow, in a squeaky whine. And added, not very convincingly: " _I'm not crazy!_ "

"No, it's okay," the girl said, almost as placatingly as the previous whoever. "You just woke up! Everyone was a mess in the beginning, I threw things at the wall and flipped my recuperacot and then cried about it—"

"She's nuts and so are you," said Scarnose, bluntly, "but I'm told it's a temporary and expected condition and no one will hold it against you."

Karkat could only sob in great gulps as a response. Just as suddenly and uncontrollably as the crying jag had come, it was already passing him by; in but a few despondent sniffles it was over, and he was left numb and dizzy as if he had depleted his store of feelings for the night.

He sagged back against his chair, overcome with lethargy.

"He's kind of boring," he heard someone say, all the way from some distant galaxy. 

"He wasn't like this back with the pirates," someone else said, their voice vaguely familiar. "Or on the rescue ship. He was actually pretty funny, and kind of stubborn. This is just creepy."

Karkat had no recollection of having attempted jokes. He couldn't even imagine what it felt like to experience mirth.

"Tir also called me creepy back on the first night or so... but recently he said I was much less gloomy—"

"Tir is a fucking asshole. I just tune out everything he says."

"Tir isn't always an asshole—"

"Maybe he'll get better. These people can heal anything."

"Funny _you_ calling him asshole—"

"Or at least they say they do."

"They healed me."

"So they say."

"Well, they won't cull him, at least, or half the kids here would be paint by now—"

The sounds of bickering around him started sputtering out, and the stunned silence that followed encouraged Karkat to stop staring at the screen saver bouncing around on the chair's armrest and raise his head.

He didn't have to raise it very far, as it was a motley group of very smug looking pint-sized alien pupas. 

One of them waved at him, and then the others followed.

"Hi," said another, and once again, the others in the group repeated the greeting in a broken echo; the one on the forefront extended its hand to set some sort of cup in his hand, light enough that his dumb fingers didn't immediately let it drop.

Then the little alien pointed at it solemnly and said: "Poodinke!"

Its' companions voices immediately rose up in unintelligible complaint. They gathered in a small huddle as another tiny alien consulted its hand-held device; they all stared at the screen and spoke amongst themselves in their alien language, and eventually the first one turned back to him, pointed again to the cup and said, equally as solemnly:

"Poodinghy!"

Karkat looked down at his own hand. It was a pudding cup.

He looked back up. There was... there was probably something he was supposed to say, right? What was it again? _What was it?_ He was gripped by sudden panic.

The alien kids didn't seem interested in waiting around for his brain to sort words out, however; they just started waving their hands over their heads and saying "byyyyyye" very carefully, over and over, turning around to show their wiggling palms to all the other trolls around him. The one with the device hurriedly dug its hand in a pocket, pulled out some sort of truffle wrapped in butterfly-shaped paper, offered it to the nearest troll at random and triumphantly said "Kahndee!" before following its peers out of their circle.

Once outside, the pupas dropped all pretense of civilization and started jumping around in loud, squealy celebration, not unlike a gaggle of particularly accomplished fur-noodles.

"Well, _that_ happened," said one of the older trolls, after a small stunned pause; Karkat was only able to place this one by virtue of it being the androgynous one who, once cleaned, looked even more like a painting. "But hey! I love that alien pudding, it's delicious!"

It leaned down and very casually plucked the cup from his hand; before Karkat's eyes could register any further movement, however, the cup was being put back in his hand by Widehorns, while Androgynous One was rolling on the floor under a whole bunch of feet.

"So here's the spoon," said Widehorns helpfully, very purposefully ignoring Androgynous' cries for mercy. "It detaches from the top of the cup, like _this_ , see? They gave one of these to everyone earlier, it really is very good. Also nevermind Kurali, we think he does this kinda shit on purpose just to get attention."

"...he?" Karkat mumbled.

"Well... we _think_. He ain't saying."

Karkat just vaguely turned back to his pudding cup. 

It really was good, he found on his first bite, silky-soft and sweet and cool. But it was a small cup, finished all too soon; and once he no longer had the taste and the mechanics of holding a spoon to occupy his mind with, the awful hollow melancholy came back with a vengeance.

He watched the other trolls talk amongst themselves as if from behind a thick curtain, and he couldn't tell which prospect seemed worse— standing apart or joining in. 

It felt like an eternity later when the creepy mute alien came back to fuss again, this time with some sort of scarf to drape over his shoulders. Following her was, to his surprise, Zellie; she took one look at him and nodded once, solemnly, and despite himself, he started feeling like people again. 

The scarf helped. It was newly-ironed, or self-warming for all he knew. 

But for all that he liked the new arrival and that his mood had settled somewhat, he was still guiltily glad to be wheeled away from the group. Zellie didn't seem surprised or worried to see him go; she spoke sternly with the others, a handheld device in one hand, and gave him a small wave as he passed them by. Others repeated the gesture in startled confusion. Most just stared at her. 

"...which goes to show why they've got us on these mood trackers— you guys weren't even paying him any attention, were you?" she was saying right before the door swung close at their backs. 

It wasn't until they were almost in front of his door that he took notice of a spindly alien woman standing by it, looking particularly sharp— oh, it was, what's her face, Sabiha. She was wearing different clothes, but the headscarf was just similar enough to be recognizable. 

She smiled at him and he almost smiled back, but for some reason the prospect of doing so made him feel fake. 

Once inside, the servant settled his floating device by the padded platform, then stepped back; Sabiha sat on her chair, tablet in hand but not in use.

"How are you feeling tonight?" She asked. "Do you want to lie down?"

Karkat shrugged halfheartedly. 

"Hm," she said pensively. The servant stared at them both with a careful, gauging look. "You look a little tired. Would you like your friends to come visit you in here instead?"

Karkat looked around himself helplessly, at the unfamiliar but safe-looking block. "I— I don't know," he forced himself to say, hating the whine that was creeping into his voice. "Maybe not? I don't know!" he shook his head in frustration. "It was so weird, and too much. I don't know what I even mean. But I don't want to just—" he flapped his hands. "I'm not... I don't hate them. I don't know!"

"I understand the recreation room can be overwhelming," she said, businesslike. "And they wouldn't be able to come in here all at once anyway. If your problem is the amount of people, we can arrange it so they'll only come in small groups."

"I don't even know what _my_ stupid problem is," he spat. "What makes you think you do?"

"I'm older than your average highblood," she said, with supreme serenity. "And I've been dealing with children like you for nearly half that long. You fit all the standards."

The servant remained impassive, yet the very air around her seemed to crackle with anger. She gesticulated at Sabiha one-handed, with eye-twisting speed and snappy precision, and Sabiha seemed to be not so much ignoring her as making a studied display of it.

"Karkat," she said, again very studiously, "this Senior Pediatric Nurse has been healing children for longer than I have been alive, and she believes my words could be construed as a provocation. What say you?"

"She's scary," he said, without much feeling.

The servant looked flustered this time, and despite himself Karkat felt a smile tug his lips.

"Also your standards can lick my shitting pants," he added, for the hell of it.

"See?" Sabiha turned pointedly to the servant. "He'll be fine. Karkat," she started over, as if the interruption hadn't happened, "I _have_ been handling cases like yours for a long time, and I'm a good guesser, but exceptions exist. My job is finding what will work for you, but if what I find doesn't work, you have to bitch me out. Can I count on you for that?"

Karkat settled back in his device, not quite in relaxation but somewhere close. Sabiha wasn't exactly _pleasant_ , and he didn't know whether he _liked_ her, but he didn't _dislike_ her. She seemed effortlessly cool, in the way that a hardboiled movie protagonist seemed effortlessly cool, and she had an unmistakable air of efficiency around her. She kind of made Karkat himself want to be cool and efficient.

She also spoke too damn much sometimes, but hey, apparently explaining shit was part of her job too. 

"I guess I could bitch you out," he said, eventually.

"Excellent," she nodded. "So let's try small group visits for a couple of days, and see how it works for you." She tapped at her tablet. "And we'll give you a button in case you want them out but don't want to say it to their faces. We'll bullshit an excuse for you and you can look sorry to see them go."

"You sure do think of everything," Karkat mumbled. Privately he both hated the thought of such a wussy button, and appreciated the hell out of it.

"It's in my job description," she said airily. "Do you want to try a visit today?"

Karkat felt his face twist, in a remote sort of way. He didn't relish the thought of being alone for however long it'd take him to fall asleep again— he was tired, but still— and yet the thought of receiving anyone from the group he'd just left behind was...

It was awkward. The meeting already felt like it had happened a week ago, and now it had an aftertaste of stale embarrassment. What do you say to someone who saw you cry like a wiggler and then eat pudding?

"Hm," she said, again with the thoughtful look. "It could be later," she said. "Or tomorrow. Or it could be— somebody else?"

The servant bristled again, more discreetly this time. The hesitation in Sabiha's voice was calculatedly airy, just a little bit shy of theatrical; to Karkat's still dubious ears, it sounded like she knew he might not like what she was going to say, but wasn't worried over his nerves like the Senior Peedy Servant was.

Everything about Sabiha felt so calculated, Karkat was starting to think she learned the art of conversation not from actual interaction but from brain-twisting spy romances.

...that was probably why she seemed so cool.

"Lay it on me," he said, sagging to the side in a forced display of nonchalance.

"You told me you didn't remember it," she said. Measuring, gauging. Her tablet floated to the side of her head, where she could see it without blocking her view of him. "Saving an alien child."

Karkat had a wild moment where he was first surprised, and then disgusted, at the fact that he had no emotional reaction to those words.

"I still don't remember," he said. His voice came out toneless. 

Sabiha nodded slowly. "Well, she does," she said, lightly. "She wants to thank you, and so do her custodians. They can meet you today, if you feel up to it."

"And if I don't?"

"It's not a big deal," she glanced at her tablet again, adjusted its angle. "We'll tell them you're still more asleep than awake. They'll probably have us ask you for your own preferred time and date. Today they just happened to be around."

"For what?"

"Fetching their pupa," she said. "The girl's physical healing is complete and they'll be going home to a different system. They just wanted to know if a visit was possible before they left."

"So today is just..." Karkat waved a hand aimlessly, "convenient?"

"Yeah, pretty much," Sabiha made a shrug look elegant.

"Well, can't inconvenience them, can I?" Karkat mumbled to himself, irritated but not sure at what.

"I disagree," she said. "They're fine and healthy and you're not. You get to set the pace. If you're ill or in a bad mood it'll just make the meeting unpleasant. You have no obligations toward them anyway— you already did them an immense favor."

"Well, fuck you and fuck that noise," he rasped out, half-sunk in his floaty seat and sliding further down by the second. "To begin with I'm never not in a filthy crusty mood so putting this off on that account is pointless. And I don't want the threat of some sickening ritualistic alien gratitude jamboree hanging over my head for however long it takes me to not be a gnarly mess. I ain't getting any younger! Send in those clowns. Let's get it out of the way."

"Okay," she said, just like that, and tapped away at her tablet. Karkat honestly could not tell whether she'd reverse-psyched him into her own prefered option, or whether she'd simply accepted his decision at face value. 

The fact that he couldn't immediately convince himself of the former was throwing him off the most.

The servant radiated disapproval, but still she bustled efficiently and without any handflaps of complaint. The seat or the platform, she pointed meaningfully. Seat, please and thank you. She adjusted him back into a less melting configuration, straightened his clothes and his shawl, and arranged a group of chairs in such a way that he was right by the padded platform, the visitors' seats were close to the door, and Sabiha was seated between them in an only very slightly obtrusive way. 

To get them kicked out pronto, all he had to do was press his accuser finger for five seconds on his armrest's little screen. They made him test it. After a small wait the screen tapped his finger back; the servant showed him her vibrating wrist-mounted screen, and the blinking warning in it. Shit was just too efficient.

A small unnerving box floated at his elbow, apparently an automated translator. His visitors didn't speak Alternian.

"It should be fine," Sabiha said vaguely. "I'll keep an ear out just in case, but the software is nearly perfected— at least between Skaian and Alternian."

"Huh," Karkat grunted. Translating software was somewhere on the bottom of his list of things to give a shit about.

After a small awkward wait, the light over the door turned on. The servant made it slide open. 

Two aliens, presumably female, stepped in with timid smiles and timid gait. One was dark brown and very curly; the other was a mottled alien with two tendrils flowing backwards from the top of her head, and some growth other than hair made her head look like a flowering cabbage. Maybe something to do with that cartilaginous texture he vaguely remembered examining on someone. 

It looked enough like hair to not be incredibly weird. He tried not to wonder how it was kept clean.

Belatedly he noticed a bashful wiggler clinging to one of their legs; brown and curly as well, she hid half her face behind her apparent ancestor, squinting at him with a small-toothed grin. When he stared head-on, she did a small jump and buried her face behind a jeans-clad thigh. 

The two adults sat, but she forewent her own small chair in favor of clambering on her ancestor's lap, giggling under her breath and ensconcing herself against the adult's torso. She had a wet gleaming finger in her mouth. It looked gross.

The aliens spoke. "Hi," said the translator at his elbow, in a passable imitation to their voices. "Hello. Hi."

The last was a decidedly inadequate rendition of the wiggler's singy-songy, elongated greeting. She waved at him. It was the non-sticky hand at least.

"This is Mrs. Izhiraman," said Sabiha, gesturing at the cabbage-headed woman, "and Mrs. Noela," the brown woman, "and their child Jindaïna." Jinda-eena. What an ugly-ass name. Somewhere by the new adults, a different translator prattled on in crazy space tongues. 

Sabiha spoke to them at length in the same tongue; after a considering delay, his own translator piped up.

"Karkat has no recollection of the events prior to the explosion," the translator explained, a little stilted. "He remembers disembarking, he remembers the attack, however we have not yet determined when his account of events cuts off. It is likely to be a temporary condition. He wished to see you nevertheless."

The brown alien nodded dumbly; both visitors had a look of long held stupidification. But stunned or not the cabbage-headed alien didn't let the pause stretch enough to be felt; she lowered her head in a deep nod and spoke her alienese in a progressively shaky voice.

"Thank you for receiving us," said the translator, entirely too smoothly, "and thank you ever so much for protecting our pupa."

As the translator prattled, Karkat's eyes tracked the cabbage alien's hand as it groped around for the brown one's. By the time it was finished, their fingers were clutching each other tightly.

Karkat could probably have done without speaking for the entire encounter. The visit seemed mostly like a social obligation those two were expected to suffer for, and that was perhaps why he felt the need to fill the empty spaces with random fluff.

"Somehow, "you're welcome" sounds incredibly inappropriate in this case," he mumbled, feeling a lot less confident in his words than he'd been right before speaking. 

Their translator relayed him in a much peppier tone. This surprised a small laugh from the brown alien; her arm relaxed around her pupa. Cabbage-head looked delighted. Karkat risked raising a corner of his mouth. At least this was going to be an _amusing_ disaster.

The brown woman spoke softly. "This is Jinda," said the translator. She bounced her knees a little, just enough to jiggle the little girl on them; the translator picked up. "She is my long-held dream. For twelve sweeps we prepared ourselves for her arrival. We loved her long before she existed. We were commemorating her hatching day when the ships came. Thanks to you, we will be able to commemorate again her next one."

Thanks to the translator's delay, Karkat didn't have to act like he heard the woman's sniffling.

"I can't really take credit for what I don't remember," he said, once the translator was done. That was really the crux of it, for him— they could say it had happened a thousand times, but it wouldn't feel any truer. Was it really him who did it? Wasn't there a mistake somewhere?

"I do, I do!" his translator piped up in a squeak; the little girl was squirming down her ancestor's lap and babbling in high-pítched alienese. "I remember because I was there and I saw you and it was you."

She walked up straight to him and pointed with her sticky finger. "So I was here and crying because there was a hole over here and momom was over there and I was scared and I couldn't jump." She made several disconnected motions, rendered utterly contextless by the delay— hugging her underarms, throwing her hands up, jumping feebly, then throwing herself on the carpet. "And then you grabbed me like this and I didn't see you because it was behind, but the reporter did and he got the thing. But you grabbed me like this, and then you threw me like this, and I flew like this, right over the hole, and the hole went big, and I fell on him like this, and then we fell down like this, and it was very hot! And I got burned all over here, and here," those were possibly referring to when she'd traced a finger down the back of her arm and her shoulder, "and then you came flying like this, push," the latter seemed like an onomatopoeia mistranslation, as it seemed to be rendering the moment when she suddenly sprayed a lot of spit while throwing herself on the carpet again, "and you were like this," _this_ was probably her sprawling back on the carpet in a tangle of limbs with her head thrown back and her tongue out, "and there was a lot of blood, it was very blood," his gut clenched and he stopped breathing for a second, "and then the flying people came and put you in the thing and then they put me in the thing and I couldn't see no more. But you were there!"

She pointed victoriously at him. 

"Well, _that_ clarifies everything," he said, half in a sigh. "Tongue lolling out, that's me alright, laying down the charm all over the pavement in nasty unholy red."

"Yes, that is exactly how you were," she confirmed, gravely, or the translator did. Somehow when it came to her the translator seemed able to capture every nuance of childlike squeaking. "You're funny, we should talk more. Do you want to be friends on the flower villa?" She was wielding a small portable communication device in his general direction. "We farm together. I have a really big farm. I'll give you twenty peaches, I have lots, and peaches are expensive! But I'm a good player and that is why I have lots of peaches. Where is your tablet?'

She looked around, went on tip-toes as if expecting to find a tablet on the padded platform; then she walked confidently up to the piece of furniture behind him, pulled on a sliding box and dug out a tablet he hadn't even known was there.

"Jinda!" the two aliens took turns gasping out in mortification; when he looked back at them the brown one was frozen in a full-body cringe and the other one had her face buried in her hands, and her forehead was moirail pink under the freckles.

Jinda plopped the unknown tablet on his lap, touched her small device to it, and spoke confidently without even looking up. "Open up your villa," said the translator. "I'll show you how to be friends."

Sabiha spoke to her, just as confidently as she had spoken. "That tablet is not his, small Jinda," said the translator. "The healer forgot it there."

"What!" Jinda looked up at the adults, absolutely _miffed_ , and Cabbage-head took the opportunity to cross half the block in a single step and sweep her off her feet. Jinda made no movement to stop her; rather, she wrapped her legs around the alien's waist as if she had been doing it forever. Behind them, Sabiha raised an eyebrow (or what he assumed was the hairless equivalent of one) and Karkat immediately shook his head. 

Fuck no, he didn't want to farm virtual peaches with some alien girl.

"Yes, honey," said the translator's rendition of Cabbage-head. "Karkat lost his tablet."

"It fell down the hole?" Jinda asked.

"Yes, that is what happened to it," Cabbage-head said, very sneakily walking back to her seat and holding the pupa very firmly on her lap as she sat down.

"But what will happen to his _villa_?" for once, the translator failed to properly render the anguish in Jinda's voice.

"Karkat didn't have one," Sabiha explained, with a tone of infinite patience that the translator was also unable to fathom. "Where he came from, they didn't have flower villa."

"Why?"

"They had other games."

"But not flower villa?"

"No."

"That is _bad!_ " Jinda pumped her fist with such vehemence that her communication device bounced straight to the floor. She looked thoroughly surprised to see it go, but the brown alien swiped it back up in less than a second; she said something under her breath, and the translator murmured an equally soft "thanks" at his elbow, creepy enough that he almost jumped from his seat.

"Well," said Jinda, once recovered from her faux pas, "I think you should buy another tablet and play flower villa soon," she told him all the way from her lap seat, imperiously. "It is great. I will teach you everything in it."

The white servant stepped forward to gesture slowly at Jinda, who stared at the graceful hands with serious concentration. She actually seemed to understand whatever it meant.

"Ah, so he hurt his hands," said the translator, as she covered her mouth. "I see. So he can't play yet."

"Yes," said the brown alien, according to the translator. "And he needs his rest right now. It is perhaps time for us to go."

Karkat nodded. It went as well as a random interview with random aliens and a pupa could be expected to go, but he was thoroughly ready to consider it finished. He glanced at Sabiha to see whether she agreed. 

She was staring at her tablet with a perfectly neutral face. Something about the fact that she was missing the end of the visit did not bode well with him. 

"Get well soon," the aliens were saying, tripping over each other and the translator. "Good bye. Byyyyye!"

He waved limply. The servant opened the sliding door.

Outside, he saw a flash of intense blue, suddenly tangled in a confusion of limbs and voices. 

The air around the servant broiled; the aliens pushed out with great determination, keeping somebody else from walking in, and the nurse slapped the door closed as soon as they had crossed the step. 

Sabiha was staring at the closed door with eyes wide and lips tight, and spoke something in alienese to the servant, flat with disbelief.

"They were actually outside, weren't they," rendered the translator.

"Who?" Karkat asked, immediately.

Sabiha's head whipped back to him, but she didn't look the least embarrassed at being caught. "During the visit, I was notified that someone else wanted to see you," she said in Alternian. "I don't see why they would, or whether they _should_."

"Who is _it?_ " he insisted.

Sabiha's lips twisted. She seemed more flustered than distasteful. "A member of the Skaian Royal Family," she said at last. "Prince John Egbert of the Crocker line. Royalty or not, he really shouldn't have been able to come this far in without authorization," she added, in clear frustration.

Karkat stared at the door. Royalty? What? Authorization? Why? But before he could really panic, the blank he had been drawing suddenly filled up.

John.

Neuromuscular-remapping John.

He pointed at the door, and for a second all he could do was gape.

"Karkat?" Sabiha asked, carefully.

"John!" he wheezed. "In my dream! The lake! And the house!!" he looked at her wide-eyed. "Holy shit! He remembered!"

Sabiha stared, uncomprehending(!), before her face suddenly cleared.

"Oh!" and then, "Do you want to see him?"

"Yes!" Karkat shouted, near to the point of grabbing his hair. Holy dang shit, the dream!

The servant slapped the door open right away, and there was Nerdy-ass Ignorant John in near-radioactive blue and all his square-glassed glory—

His stock of the visitors ground to a halt, because right over John's shoulder, and past a douchey white-haired face, he spotted a Nasty Grin.

It wasn't a Nasty "will rip throats with gleeful abandon" Grin, or a Nasty "have arranged for a great many people's impending misery" Grin, but it was a grin that knew it was getting its way when it was not supposed to, and a grin that was entirely too smug about it.

It was the smug part that got to him and filled his mind with sharp crystal clarity. 

A pale pink alien was wearing a uniform like his white mute servant, and the smug grin was quickly replaced by a look of demure and professional serenity, but it was too late; John stepped in, and some other alien kid behind him, and then Karkat pointed at the smug one and screeched.

" _Don't you dare!_ "

John and his friend looked back in surprise but the smug one didn't react in any way, didn't halt the step it was taking to cross into his block— and somewhere to the side of his focus he saw Sabiha rise from her seat like a slick-black mutated shadow panther of death, like a fighter, like someone who could deliver death in a single silent strike, and he knew then—

This was no servant, and Sabiha really was a General.

But before Sabiha could strike and before the impostor's foot landed on his carpet, the white servant slapped its face, plopped her palm on the alien symbol over its chest, and walked out of the room, pushing it along. It looked up in surprise, but at Karkat instead of its assailant; and as the door slid closed on the gobsmacked face, Karkat twisted his face and gnashed his teeth with all the hatred he could muster, accuser finger doing its job perfectly despite its weakened state.

The last thing it saw was his hateful sneer. It was now his turn to feel massively smug.

* * *

John looked back over his shoulder at the door, exuding clueless bird-like confusion. As he did so his clothes didn't seem to crease so much as produce soft, rolling gradients across his torso; he was clad neck to toe in shades of intense, bright off-indigo blue, accented with minimal dashes of gold and yellow— and that, plus the overall lack of any visible seams on the obviously fitted clothes, gave the simple cut of his garb an aura of massive, mind-boggling luxury.

He wore nary a single jewel, not even a shitty gold ring, but there was no doubt in Karkat's mind that this was royalty apparel.

His companion, a pink alien with dark glasses and nearly trauma-white hair, looked positively plebeian by comparison. But despite their ostensive casualness, his clothes were also of visibly high-quality stock, at least by Karkat's Alternian sensibilities. 

Come to think of it, the patterned silky-satiny pajamas he himself was wearing also looked more expensive than anything he'd ever had on his body, or on a miles-wide radius to his body. He didn't really know what to do with that sudden awareness.

Apparently satisfied that the door wouldn't give him answers, John shrugged to himself (his clothes didn't seem to interact with light on a sane manner and it was _weird_ ) and immediately availed himself of one of the chairs. He pulled a small floating device, decorated in bright blue and yellow as well, from _somewhere_ — Karkat didn't spot any captchalogue card, and wouldn't be surprised to learn these people had long surpassed them — then he waved at Karkat with an alien greeting, turned to his companion and casually tapped the other chair with a hand.

"Hi!" said his translator. "Debt, location towards."

Wait, what?

The other kid ambled to the chair from his spot holding up the wall, affecting an enviable slouch for the whole two steps it took to reach it. His mouth made mumbly, half-guessed sounds. 

Karkat's translator made a weird purring noise. Not the kind of pleasant purring usually associated with small furry creatures only slightly likely to rip out one of your eyes, but a sort of continuous electronic pulse, perhaps a second long. It felt like underground music, both the figurative sort and the literal sort you felt more than heard through the soles of your feet.

"Wall (pulse) disaster fall what, what, (pulse) me I you what, sex, clemency, (pulse) prince, bird of prey negative— duty— me me (pulse) what (pulse) bird of prey (pulse) what, slam poetry (pulse) (pulse) work (pulse) you I me, automobile device purrbeast, universe (pulse), antinomy. Processed oblong meat product (pulse) unity of distance (pulse) (pulse) pencil."

Karkat stared at his translating device, expecting it to be gently wafting black smoke out of its speaker. It wasn't. He turned instead to Sabiha, half expecting _her_ to be gently wafting black smoke out of her ears. She wasn't either, but she was definitely sucking air through her teeth in a worried manner.

"Give me a second," she said, and John's colorful device piped up with something that made a near-transparent eyebrow show up over the rim of the other kid's glasses.

Well, that answered _that_ question. It was a personalized translating device, and he would have assumed it to be better than his if it weren't for that one eyebrow.

Sabiha spoke to them in alienese. 

"Karkat's translator appears to be having trouble with your language," Karkat's translator said.

John's translator piped up in— in a _different_ kind of alienese. Well, shit.

"(pulse) Automobile device (pulse) mammalian brood tongue soup mistake (pulse) fashion," said _Karkat's_ translator.

Well _shit_.

John spoke in the different alienese. Nothing happened (except a lot of purring word salad from Karkat's translator), until his companion fiddled around with a hand-held device; then, after some meaningful poking, John repeated his previous words, and his own translator piped up.

Karkat's remained inert. Possibly for the best.

They exchanged a couple more sentences in this way, then Sabiha consulted her tablet for thirty very awkward seconds. Eventually she pursed her mouth, then turned to him. 

"Apparently John's main language is an incredibly obscure dialect," she said. "It's only spoken privately among a few members of Skaian royalty. Even on the planet he was raised in— a protected territory yet to hit the technological threshold for introduction to the Coalition— it's only natively spoken by roughly 340 million individuals. This is... highly irregular." She pursed her lips again. "He has _some_ knowledge of Skaian, but very limited. At his age, he should have had a working understanding of all three official tongues."

"Then basically we can't even fucking talk," Karkat went right for the crux of the matter. "So much for this visit. What a waste of time. How come we talked just fine in the dream thing?"

"Parsing filters?" Sabiha shrugged. "You were probably communicating your intentions directly, or bypassing linguistic intermediates. Frankly I don't really know. The PRISM simulation is insanely sophisticated. But I can look into it if you're curious, it certainly seems interesting."

"Well, I don't care," Karkat waved a wobbly hand. He was starting to feel it again, looming in the distance— that great yawning hole, opening up inside him to devour even the urge to cry. "I thought I was going to make a new friend. My mistake. I don't know why I ever expected anything good to happen in my life, when a gaggle of diseased pirates went through the trouble of coming into it with actual imperial sanction in their grubby fists to teach me better."

He would have continued. That was a nice little base to build up a good rant from. But his throat closed up, his eyes welled up, and he was once again tired, too tired to be ashamed, too tired to be angry, too tired to speak or think; he let his head droop and the tears run, and he let his mind wander back into fog. The night was over. It held no more interest for him.

But even for a mind determined to sink into catatonic depression, the eye-searing blue of John's attire was difficult to ignore. And it was approaching him, novelty translator in one hand, an equally garish communication device on the other. 

He sat on the padded platform right by Karkat's seat, and deposited his translator right by Karkat's silver-grey one. Karkat looked up despite himself; John was staring at his little screen and mouthing something over and over, very carefully.

Then he turned to Karkat's tear-smeared face, grinned, and spoke with complete confidence.

"I weel lahrn Altarnian!" 

And then he put his hand on Karkat shoulder, cocked his head to the side, and spoke in alienese— Sabiha's alienese.

"You are forever friend," said Karkat's translator. "Okay?"

The yawning pit in Karkat's soul retreated sheepishly, and he was left with nothing to hold back those great wracking sobs that had been building up.

Karkat collapsed damply onto John's chest, hiccuping like a champion, and John's patting hand on his back was as firm as his feeling of dejà-vu. Then John enveloped him in a tight hug, and, shit, being hugged was so nice, having a solid presence to hold him up was one of the sweetest, most pleasant sensations he could recall in his life. Who would have though? How would he have known?

He sat there and shook and cried for who knows how long, and when John pushed him back, only shame kept him from clinging on. John's luxurious overshirt was now a damp mess in varying shades of purple, hanging heavy on his chest. Karkat batted at the stain helplessly, not sure what he was trying to accomplish. An apology? An acknowledgement that he'd stained John's expensive shirt?

John looked down, rubbed an equally expensive sleeve on the wet stain, then shrugged. He grinned as if the state of his clothing was the last thing on his mind. 

Karkat grinned back despite himself. "I—" he croaked. "I will learn... Skaian," he said finally, having groped around for whatever it was that John had been said to know. 

This time, John's translator was the one to purr and pulse in a weird subsonorous way, and it surprised a laugh out of them both.

Something broke in the atmosphere, and the room became overwarm. Sabiha stood up; she was smiling, but everything about her posture announced that the visit was over. John fiddled hurriedly with his device, picked his translator up. He and Sabiha exchanged words. His companion piped in at times. It went by very fast. 

John nodded like a troll on a mission, gave Karkat one last, quick hug, and strode to the door. His companion sent an economic wave Karkat's way, nodded as well. They crossed the threshold, and Sabiha slid the door closed at their backs.

"Well," she said, with an accomplished sigh, "how about a warm bath?"

Karkat half-smiled at the suggestion. He was definitely damp, and definitely spent; the warm scarf around his shoulders felt like a weird moist fever. The back of his neck was wet and hot, his fingers were dry and cold. Definitely no more visitors for him.

Sabiha walked up to his seat, and he offered her the forgotten tablet Jinda had found. It had somehow managed to not fall off his lap despite the excitement. She started at it blankly, then laughed under her breath; she took it from his fingers, turned it around, and handed it back.

"It's yours, actually," she said. "I completely forgot to tell you about it."

Karkat took it, hesitated, and then put it on the padded platform. He'd think about it later.

She pushed his seat around the platform and into the ablution block, typed into a number pad on the wall, opened the flooding pipes for the trap. There were several, fairly strong, and the trap filled fast. The water steamed just a little bit. 

She helped him out of his clothes, and he felt too stunned and vague to be self-conscious even as he clung to her hand to step into the hot water.

If he asked, would she hug him? Would the white servant hug him? He couldn't remember whether he'd ever yearned for that kind of touch back home, but he'd had Crabdad, and he'd never been shy around him. Perhaps he'd have clung to some pretense of emotional detachment, but right here and right now it seemed almost ridiculous to make any claims to imaginary strength.

He wanted a hug. But, he thought as he watched Sabiha wrap a robe over her clothes and arrange towels on a wall-mounted recliner, he didn't want— didn't have the guts— to ask. 

She dimmed the lights and put a glowing globe in the water, like the white servant had a long time ago. It covered the walls with color patterns, gently swaying. They sat for some time in companionable silence, him watching the mesmerizing colors, her sitting on his chair and reading. Eventually she offered a thing called an "ablution pellet"; it filled Karkat's trap with colorful froth, and he lathered himself while she spoke about the languages of the United Galaxies.

Each species had a near-infinite variety of languages and dialects (he was surprised to learn even trolls had two known and possibly more unknown), and one in particular was chosen as a sort of common language so all these disparate people could communicate with each other outside their own territories. For communication between species, knowing each other's common language was considered essential. 

The most used one was actually Carapacian— the mute, gesture-based one, which was the easiest to learn and the first to be taught to pupas everywhere, regardless of territorial dialect. But spoken Carapacian was rarely used outside its capitals, and the Carapacian writing system was so complex, it was barely viable in such a wide territory. Only scholars knew all the intricacies of the system. Simplification attempts had mixed results. Most simply wrote in Skaian. Therefore the Carapacian writing system itself wasn't taught along with the silent gestures.

Skaian itself had a saner alphabet, familiar to trolls, and Sylphidean's system was (according to Sabiha) regular enough to make up for the number of symbols involved. Having a passing knowledge of all three was considered basic knowledge for a pre-adult of Karkat's age; specializing in one and coasting by the other two was acceptable for newly-adults. Fluency on the three was required for high-responsibility jobs.

"And soon it'll be four," she said, activating the rain apparatus so he could wash off the suds. "Alternian will be announced as an official language within a couple of seasons. Most likely by the hundred-sweeps celebration. But you're way ahead of everyone else on that one."

The trap flushed out the soapy residues, then quickly washed off with a measured burst of clean water. He grasped the trap's borders, tried to remember how he'd ever gotten out of it before— but Sabiha just scooped him up as if he weighed nothing. 

It was kind of like that hug he'd been hankering for. He relaxed in her arms, and she took her sweet time lowering him onto the towel-covered recliner. (That explained the robe at least. Hopefully it would salvage her clothes.)

Once he was toweled and dressed in fresh pajamas (still scarily quality ones), she took the sodden robe off and picked him up once again. But this time she bypassed his floating chair entirely. Instead she carried him all the way back around the platform like he were the swooning diamond in a period romance, and held him up one-armed _somehow_ as she yanked his covers back. He was swooning at least 75% for real when she gently sat him down against the many pillows, facing the door as he'd originally been, and covered him back.

Then she handed him the tablet he'd all but forgotten about. He'd assumed it'd flown somewhere when she pulled the covers. Sabiha really was so damn smooth.

She was teaching him some basic tablet functions when the white servant came back, sporting a victorious smile and a colorful sticker on her cheek. She was pushing a tray of cookies and dips and a gently steaming mug; and when he'd had his fill and pushed the remains away, she presented him with a huge, warm, squishy, mellow-eyed rendition of a cholerbear. 

He clung to it with arms and legs as he fell asleep. 


End file.
